NASBP Fly-in Records High Number of Meetings with Congressional Offices 

The 2013 NASBP Legislative Fly-in recorded one of the highest ratios of U.S. Congressional Office meetings per attendee. NASBP is pleased to report that 65 NASBP Fly-in attendees visited over 60 Congressional Offices to raise awareness of the importance of the surety bond product. Several NASBP members visited multiple Congressional offices during the afternoon including California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, and South Carolina–to name a few. Some of those visits are pictured below.

NASBP President Lawrence F. McMahon and Government Relations Committee Chair William Maroney kicked off the Issue Orientation/Policy Briefing Program with their advice and the issues participants should bring to the attention of their members of Congress including the most important of those issues, the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, H.R. 776, the “Security in Bonding Act.” NASBP was pleased to start the morning program with the sponsor of H.R. 776, Representative Richard Hanna, who discussed the importance of the bill. Hanna, a Republican in his second term in Congress representing New York’s 22nd District, serves on the House Small Business Committee where he chairs the Subcommittee on Contracting and Workforce and on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Prior to being elected to Congress, Hanna owned a construction company, Hanna Construction, that grew in 27 years to employ more than 450 people – many from the construction trades. Following Hanna’s remarks, he engaged in a lively Q&A session where he addressed the prospects of a new transportation bill before this Congress and the need to re-evaluate the current system of transportation funding.

Fly-in participants also heard remarks from two of Hanna’s House colleagues, Republican Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer, who represents Missouri’s third Congressional District, and Democratic Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is a freshman Representative and who represents New Mexico’s first Congressional District. Luetkemeyer, a former insurance agent and a past bank examiner for the state of Missouri serves on the House Small Business and Financial Services Committees. He is Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance.

Luetkemeyer recently signed on as a cosponsor to H.R. 776. His remarks to Fly-in attendees included the priorities of his subcommittee and the full committee, which continues to examine the effectiveness of Dodd-Frank and regulatory barriers that hinder economic growth. Grisham, who serves on the House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee, provided Fly-in attendees with the issues that House OGR is currently examining which include: the investigation where the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has targeted tax returns of selected political groups, excessive spending at IRS conferences, and the Department of Justice’s monitoring of Associated Press (AP) phone lines.

NASBP Fly-in attendees also heard from Emily Murphy, Senior Counsel to the House Small Business Committee. Murphy, who is an expert on federal contracting matters, shared her thoughts and updated attendees on the committee’s activities for 113th Congress, which included NASBP’s testimony last month before Hanna’s subcommittee. Murphy also noted the improvements made to the Small Business Administration (SBA) Surety Bond Guarantee Program that were adopted in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2013, which Murphy played a major role in drafting. She indicated that the subcommittee would be marking up H.R. 776 in the coming weeks and that legislation on reverse auctions and two-step design-build procurement will be introduced shortly.

Following Murphy, John Klein, Associate General Counsel for Procurement Law at the U.S. SBA, shared his thoughts concerning the new SBA’s 8(a) Development Program and highlighted the proposed rules relating to mentor protégé arrangements, which NASBP members appreciated hearing about.

NASBP Director of Government Relations Larry LeClair concluded the program by reviewing talking points and distributing issue briefs to help prepare attendees for their Congressional visits. Some of those points included: the importance of the surety bond product, important message points to discuss concerning H.R. 776, the need for legislation to exempt the Federal Miller Act from periodic threshold increases and statutory change to allow sureties to be included along with financial institutions as an exception to the Anti-Assignment Claims Act. The afternoon was dedicated to NASBP members, affiliates, and associates meeting with their members of Congress on Capitol Hill.

The day concluded with a NASBP-hosted reception that evening in the Hart Building of the U.S Senate that provided a floor-to-ceiling view of the dome of the nation’s capital and other federal landmarks.